Cynical God
by chemicalflashes
Summary: "There are six breaths between the boy's words and the girl's response and there is no such thing as a twelfth chance." After the war, neither Hermione nor Draco is the same. [ONESHOT; DM/HG; Setting: 8th Year; Warning: Self-harm]


**A/N: This is pretty strange. I don't know why I wrote it. Hermione might seem a little out of character but this is how it was meant to be.**

**Disclaimer: I want to apologise to J.K. Rowling. Like a child, I know not what I do...**

**Dedicated to HopeWithinDarkness for being the most awesome, lovely and critically analytical reviewer out there.**

**[I hope you like it] **

. . ... .

There are six breaths between the boy's words and the girl's response and there is no such thing as a twelfth chance.

. . ... .

A cold wind is howling throughout the vast canopy of trees of the forest. Hermione sits listlessly on the cold, grassy ground, her back leaning on the hard trunk of a tree. Her dark brown hair is spread around her pale olive cheeks like an otherworldly halo. Some of the curls are mischievous and fall into her eyes but she blows them away impishly with a upward curve of her rosy lips.

Her hands are supposed to be holding quills but instead she is holding a knife in her nimble fingers. She doesn't remember where she has procured the sharp object from. All she wants is to run it across her arms, her legs, her abdomen; everywhere. (Drawing blood makes her suffer but it makes her other sufferings little. It makes her feel free.)

She is rather twisted these days.

The shiny silvery knife is running - running - running across her skin, slicing it and creating red streams in the plain lanscspe of her arms. She watches with horrific fascination as the crimson spreads and soaks the sleeves of her pulled up robe. Her other hand grips the handle furiously and the blade gashes right through the abominable marking there. The word 'Mudblood' is slashed through with a clean slit and Hermione gasps at the pain but quietens down a little later. A sadistic smile graces her face as she watches the word cut off and her brown eyes twinkle unnaturally.

She keeps on smiling hysterically.

. . ... .

She sits in Professor Flitwick's class in the manner of the top student she is - punctual, attentive and tidy. The teacher asks a question which she answers immediately, without even raising her hands. Five points are awarded to her house and she fakes a gracious smile. Nobody thinks that something is happening to her. Nobody notices the well hidden bloodstains on the black of her robe and the dirtied white of her unwashed shirt.

Nobody.

Harry and Ron have left her to be aurors and Ginny is too busy with her Quidditch. Other students adore and respect her from a distance. Still some others hate her. None of them even dare to come near her and try to know the real her, the side of her which wanted to be a normal teenaged girl. Some of them see her as the mighty war heroine whose name would go down in history textbooks and printed onto beautiful chocolate cards while others call her the girl who wrecked their families and imprisoned their Death Eater parents in Azkaban for life.

She hasn't asked for either, has she?

But nobody - _nobody _sees that.

Class is soon over and she walks out and people make way for her. Hermione smiles listlessly at random faces in random places and many of them smile back, but she doesn't notice really. It's all a sham. It's lunch time but instead of heading towards the great hall she goes to the banks of the Black Lake to see the Giant Squid frolicking in the murky depths.

Squids are better company than people.

The awful looking monster is friendly with her (it doesn't try to snatch things from her as it does with most of the other students) Hermione sits down on the grassy shore and her knife is out within moments. It is the first time she is running the blade out in the openness of the sunlight, without the darkness of the night trying to hide her secrets. The squid is more intelligent and intuitive than she thinks. A long tentacle comes from nowhere and latches onto the knife's handle.

At first she can't comprehend what's happening to the knife. Then she comes to terms with the fact that the squid is trying to snatch the object away. In the mayhem that ensues, she pulls the blade rather fiercely and somehow it creates a cut in the soft, mushy, slimy tentacle. The squid pulls away with a strange, loud sound as blue - nearly purplish blood rushes from it's injured appendage.

Hagrid rushes out from his hut to see Hermione wet from the struggle and berates the old squid for 'attacking' her and she lies along. It's not like she wanted to tell him the truth. The truth is her dark secret. She says a quick goodbye to the groundskeeper and gives him her thanks. As she walks away, she realises one thing.

She has lost a friend.

One friend from the few she has.

. . ... .

It's a glorious evening. The sky is glowing with shades of amber and crimson and it isn't as cold as it had been a few days ago. She sends letters to her friends, letters which claim that is fine and happy when she really is not. After coming down from the steps of the owlery she heads towards the lake. She finds the atmosphere there peaceful.

This time though, the squid isn't frolicking in the calm waters. Hermione looks at the glassy waters with an apologetic look. She wants to say sorry to her friend, even if it were no person and just a slimy squid. She doesn't notice the other lean silhouette sitting in the shadows of a cluster of trees nearby. Her former friend doesn't come up to the surface to see her as it during their previous visits.

She says a quite loud 'sorry' and starts to walk away when she hears the distinct sound of metal hitting wood. It is just a small, barely there _click_ but she still hears it. She has heard that particular click many a times before from her previous self-cutting sessions when she threw the sharp metal onto her wooden cupboard, her trunk or a plain old desk. Someone must have thrown something on a tree, she reasons. Curiosity piqued, she walks towards the origin of the click.

She doesn't expect to see a bloodied Draco Malfoy.

But she does see him.

He glares at her as she stares at him. It's amusing, she thinks, how their actions rhyme. His arms are bloodied but the left one is more red than the right one. Creeks of crimson are flowing through the pale landscape of his arms like when they do when she cut her own arms. It's unnerving to watch the eery similarity.

"Stop staring at me Mudblood!" he says harshly.

She sees red at that abominable word. War may have changed everyone but not him. Not Malfoy. He wore his tailored clothes, was coldly lovely as ever and still looked down upon anyone who was not as pureblooded as him. The miseries haven't taught him any lesson it seems. She doesn't think anything, abandons rationality and in quick a flash she is upon him with her own knife. She had have enough of that nasty word. "Don't." she says with so much ferociousness that for a moment he loses his ever present cockiness, though he gets over his loss in a second.

He stands up and brandishes his own knife. His arms are raised and that's when she sees his mark - _the dark mark_ and shudders a little at the sight of it. It brings all the bad memories back and they whirl around in her mind. It's a disgusting thing. Not noticing her falter, Draco says, "I am not the one to hit girls. But it seems you want a fight Granger. Bring it on, Mudblood!"

Leaving any sane ideas, Hermione lunges at him. He does the same. They fight with all the strengh they have and they aim to kill. They have gone mad, it shows in their moves. The two of them are just a blurry vision of skin, blood and torn clothes. After an eternity, Hermione's knife is at his throat but his is at hers too. It's a draw. She is lying on the ground and he has somehow fallen on her.

Their breaths leave them in gasps and pants. The sharps points haven't left their necks. Hermione and Draco look eye to eye and neither makes the first move to get up due to his/her pride. "That was a good fight Granger." he drawls. She doesn't answer him, not directly at least and says, "You just want saving, don't you Malfoy?"

"I can say the same for you." comes back the crisp reply.

A cold wind rustles through the autumnal leaves and some of them fall on the ground near them. They shiver and come to their rational senses and get up together. Neither of them says another word as they go towards their respective quarters.

She feels strange and...fresh.

He feels the same.

. . ... .

They are sitting side by side, each of them working on their own scars. They have decided to stay quiet and do what do there each evening - cut away. He attacks his Dark Mark viciously and she does the same with her engraving. It's been a month since that fight on that fateful evening. They mostly ignore each other. Sometimes they fight with their bare wrists and knives, but never wands. The fights are rare though and not as nearly bloody as the one on that evening.

"Are we living, or just breathing Malfoy?" she asks suddenly.

"Just breathing" he replies and then he is back at scarring his already scarred arm. He doesn't want to see the damned mark forever.

She takes hold of working arm and holds it gently but firmly. "Let me" she whispers and gestures to his knife. They are confidants of an atypical kind. They come from worlds as diverse as fire and water and yet find themselves united by these damnations and the need to not see them again at all. Both of them want to hide these reminders of their past with new, emotionless scars. She strongly grips his knife and runs it through the dark mark, opening recent as well as old scars. He cringes unnoticeably; that area of his skin has nearly grown unresponsive.

Happy with the bloody mess she has made, he snatches away his arm and picks up her knife before she can catch wind of anything and repays her. He attacks the word with even more vigour than her. He remembers the time when it had been put upon her and how he had been a audience to the show. He remembers her screaming, her writhing and his aunt's cackles of deranged laughter. He wonders whether their daily doings were as deranged as his aunt's.

Probably not.

He isn't scarring her arm for his sanity, her twisted happiness or some sick revenge from his deranged aunt. No, Draco would die before he would do something even remotely like that. It was just a simple repay. Nothing else.

Or was it?

. . ... .

They can't stay away from each other.

It isn't attraction.

It isn't lust.

And it definitely isn't love.

It's the companionship and the commonality of their goals that brings them together. It's the metallic aroma and the coppery tang of the blood and the illusion of putting their pasts behind them that brings them together and makes them sit under their tree near the lake each evening. But that's not the complete picture. "I shouldn't have called you a Mudblood." he mutters one day half-heartedly. He doesn't know what prompts him to utter it. He doesn't want to know.

"You have realised soon." Her tone is dripping with sarcasm.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything, just sits there, gazing intently at their lightly touching, bloodied arms and limbs. He watches their his blood and hers, which are the same crimson, mix and flow in tiny rivulets. He doesn't know where the thought comes from but suddenly he wants to grip her small chin, cup her pale cheeks and kiss her fiercely to see if the freedom of fiery passion is contagious and effective in his watery world. He doesn't do any such foolish thing.

. . ... .

They have taken a small break from cutting.

They're smoking cigarettes today and sitting on the stone paraphets of the castle. She has brought them up from her hidden stash of such things. The cigarettes produce a yellow coloured smoke and soon it engulfs them in it's misty arms. Hermione is staring at the sky with a lost look. It would rain soon, she can tell that from the distant omnious clouds on the horizon. He just concentrates on the smoke.

Here are the words that her tongue shapes out of nowhere like an accident (but there is always a method to her madness), "Do you know how to make a god, Malfoy?"

Draco exhales a billow of yellow smoke and watches it float away, bright and sheer against the thick heaviness of the cloud cover. "Tell me, Granger."

"Believe in it. You believe in it like you believe in anything else, like you believe in death and money and Malfoy superiority." The yellow haze snakes through the air, fading out.

"Gods are for muggles, Granger."

"Do you really think so? I think gods are for humans, Malfoy. Only, most have it the wrong way around - the gods didn't create us. We created the gods. We still do. We need them." Draco lets his head roll back and his gaze fixes lazily on this crazy version of Hermione Granger.

Five days later, she finds him on the parapets. (Draco tells himself that the warmth beneath his ribcage when she searches him out is fury. Malfoys are allowed to redefine reality to fit their personal comfort zones.) He is smoking again. He really has started to go through her cigarettes lately. (He doesn't know why he smokes. Don't ask him. And don't even mention its original conceptualization by Muggles.) At first everything seems normal, but then he notices the strange dampering and containment of Hermione's perpetual insanity. "You." It is an awkward jilt, a pause because Malfoys don't do this sort of tomfoolery. "You - are alright."

He cringes inwardly as his words hang in the air. He meant for it to be a question, but the words were alien and the end went flat and he is so far away from his comfort zone in this moment that the distance has to be measured temporally. In half-centuries.

And then -

Slowly, a smile, a real smile washes across her face. (She glows like a lantern in the wastelands is his only thought, strangely poetic and eloquent and so true that sparks dance over bared nerves in a figurative exposé on rawness. He wants to take a better look at this too-right simile scraping his rib cage, but then his personality's survival instinct kicks in and he reflexively flinches away from it.) When they part after a few hours of scarring, he covertly asks around before hunting down and hexing a few Ravenclaw sixth years into a fortnight with Madam Pomfrey.

. . ... .

And this is something like a month later. Draco has taken to spending time with Hermione more and more lately without a real reason, finding the ingratiating brown-nosing of his friends exponentially irritating and lured helplessly by the constant lack of conflict in the utterly mad girl.

He doesn't deny that he isn't a mad boy.

And here is the part that has him addicted - Hermione is a mass of conflict and contradictions. In Hermione Granger, chaos lives calmly (though many a times they surface), accepted and - just accepted. Accepted without a batted eye or twitch of an eyebrow - and she is more welcoming and tolerating than Draco Malfoy (in his complete superiority to every creature without Malfoy blood) has ever come within a mile of imagining. She has accepted him just like her scars.

Before Hermione, he never thought to want to imagine such a thing in the first place. She is like hob dust - just a pinch and the blood is thrumming helter-skelter in his veins, and he is weightless and breathless and very probably very delusional.

He likes that she doesn't ask obnoxious questions. She doesn't pry or look at him like he is a murderer (because he isn't). Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Draco has learned nothing that he will admit, but hard Malfoy eyes are swallowed by humour in the face of Hermione.

One afternoon, he tells her, "Granger, every word out of your mouth is a bit of a mind-fuck these days." and doesn't let himself stare at said mouth.

There is silence for a few moments as she continues to scrape away at her arm. Then she laughs and there is an insane ring to it. It is loud and cackling and he wonders if a part if Bellatrix's spirit had been transferred to her during her torture session. There is an ache in his chest as the mad girl before him showcases said madness and he doesn't know how to deal with it but will never admit it.

. . ... .

This is two days after that late afternoon of hysterical laughter. It hasn't been the best day, and it is only lunchtime.

It is only lunchtime, but Draco is about to -

Well. Let's rewind.

It has been a bad day. Draco is full of aimless irritation with the world. Pansy won't stop grabbing onto his arm and rubbing her breasts against him, and the sight of her ugly, overly made-up face trying to be coy and seductive is utterly repulsive. Blaise Zabini is watching his every movement like a hawk, and Draco knows the other boy is simply biding his time until he pounces and slyly interrogates Draco about where he has been disappearing to lately. Goyle is having an eating contest with himself to his right, and there are no words to describe such a sight. Draco pushes away his own full plate and glares at the huge boy for a few moments until he recognises the feel of his gaze and freezes before slowly looking his way. "Do not," he almost whispers, "ever create such a disgusting spectacle of yourself again." He is not a child anymore. He is a eighth year, and even though little boys don't fight wars, he has grown into someone frightening in his own right. So Goyle slowly and carefully scoots down the bench a little and keeps his thick head bowed as he eats quietly.

Draco is slightly mollified until he notices yet again Pansy's attempts at flirting. He shakes her off, and she falls from the bench with a yelp with the disappearance of her support. "Drakie-poo! How could y - "

He cuts her off with a look. "Stop your infernal yapping before I stop it for you, Pansy." She cowers on the floor of the Great Hall. She doesn't scramble up until he looks away, and he can feel her fuming at his side. He stares coldly at nothing.

This is when Blaise speaks. "My, Draco. You're in quite a temper." Blaise's goblet shatters without apparent cause. The dark-skinned boy looks at it askance before wisely renewing his silence.

All that runs through Draco's mind at this moment is that he wants classes to be over already so he can find Granger. He absolutely cannot stand the idea of an evening in the common room with his Slytherins.

But - never mind. He doesn't know what is going to happen in the next minute and a half.

Pansy is a rather malicious girl, you see, and she likes to bully people. So when she catches sight of the slightly insane Hermione Granger wandering down the aisle between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables, she sneers and calls loudly, "Hello filthy Mudblood." There are a few faint chuckles as the students in the vicinity turn their attention eagerly to the entertainment sure to come. Hermione halts in her progression towards the exit and turns to Pansy with a very rigid expression. "Hello, Parkinson. I see you've gotten rid of you pug faced nose." Titters from the bystanders. Pansy twitches and then smirks deviously at this, and there is a thick feeling in Draco's lungs that he cannot recognise. (This is dread and change and destruction of things that Draco Malfoy wants. This is wrong and bad and sliding terrible between his ribs and through but no words come) "You have gone absolutely bonkers. I hear that your parents got themselves off the during the war. They must be even more nuts. Good thing they are dead."

There is a sudden and total silence from everyone within listening distance. This is - this is a line that no one has crossed before. This is a line that has never been an option. This is a line that Pansy has just shot cattily and viciously past, knowing it isn't right and doing it just to vent her frustration. (Draco has considered this unspeakable option, but he is Malfoy. He is allowed to. And it was only for a moment...) Hermione's face is bloodless in the wake of Pansy's words. She is translucent-pale and -

She is suddenly not his Hermione. She is instead a tall girl with a face carved of white marble and big brown eyes that encompass the universe, that stare through them all.

The quiet continues. Students turn away, strangely engrossed with their food. There is no laughter.

Pansy falters slightly under the alien girl's gaze and the weight of her peers' silence. She scrabbles for support. "D-Drakie-poo! You know I am right! What'd you say?" Hermione doesn't turn to look at Draco. It makes what he is about to do harder. Air is thick in his throat, and his mouth drawls, "She's just a nutty mudblood" without his permission. (But he has known it would come to this. He has known. He has known with his Malfoy mind - he has to have known. Somewhere secret, he has known that he couldn't keep her. Right?) Pansy laughs, too-loud and shrill.

And now not Hermione speaks, and perhaps she is in this moment more herself than she has been in months. Her voice is harsh and sharp like her knife. There is angry cast to her face that makes Draco wish he - Nothing. Here are the words that fall from her tongue (the method - because Hermione saw and acknowledged and wanted him to know but he failed yet again - ), "You created a god in me."

There is a knot in his throat that feels like devastation, and unspoken words float in the wake of her robes as she meanders away. She has not looked at him once. Here - you have forsaken me now, betrayed me now abandoned me now, and I won't allow you to matter to me anymore but I'll try to understand.

He is mute and still-faced and trying desperately to erase the past five minutes from history. When Pansy moves past her bewilderment a minute later and laughs weakly - "What a little nutjob!"

He leaves. Leaves-leaves-leaves and doesn't understand why he has just denied Hermione in favor of Parkinson. (The answer - It is more politically advantageous. He is more completely Malfoy than should be possible and doesn't even realize it, so natural and him - he is Malfoy like it is his job, like it is his calling and his passion and his dream and his raison d'être.) The obscene smear of his mouth twists.

There is no beauty here. Look away.

Look away

. . ... .

He doesn't go to his afternoon classes. Obviously. Instead, he sits on the paraphets and smokes cigarette after cigarette while watching the slow passage of the sun into the west. The sheer light violates his retinas agonizingly, but he doesn't blink until green and purple spots overcome the entirety of his vision and his eyes tear in self-defense. (He doesn't want to stare at the archway. She isn't coming. He isn't waiting.)

When he runs out of both of his (her) cigarette packs and tires of staring at the moon, he stands. His limbs are stiff and frozen, and that is the only reason his back is hunched as he slowly and slightly dizzily abandons his post. There is a throbbing headache in the base of his skull, and his eyes ache and burn like acid has been dripped in them lewdly. The wind has stolen all sensation from the rest of his face.

As he unsteadily descends the stairs into the castle proper, he wants -

He wants many things. He is Draco Malfoy. He wants - money and respect and power and to never be prey and the delicacy of Hermione's scarred skin under his fingers. He wants - clout and skill and a reputation and to be remembered and Hermione humming as she tries to make his Dark Mark go away. He wants - redemption and the ear of politicians and strength and to make his father come back from Azkaban and chocolate frogs and -

Hermione

In front of him. She is walking towards him, trailing effervescent fingers on the wall with her eyes closed. 'Hermione' he doesn't say.

She hears him anyway. She opens her eyes and sneers at him. He stares at her because it seems to be his best skill - trying to speak but not quite able, flushed and hollow and only just now noticing that he is missing an essential piece of his instruction manual.

Hermione tilts her head after a few minutes, the heavy mass of her curly hair sliding across her shoulders. "You called me. Why? Am I not just a filthy, nutty Mudblood." He doesn't know what she is talking about. He says, "No," anyway. It is all he can manage.

She looks at him for another moment before she suddenly sneers again and turns to leave, humming again. (It is always the same song. He can never quite place it, but he knows it in snatches and tatters and at his core like he knows how to make a god.) In this sudden lack of air - his right hand grabs for her of its own volition, and he is touching her now and she is looking at him again and he can feel the heat of her skin through the thick weave of her bloodstained robe.

These are the words that tumble out of his mouth, "Stay with me." There are six breaths between the boy's words and the girl's response, and there is no such thing as a twelfth chance. He tells her to stay instead of asking - tells her with false bravado, like it is all a forgone conclusion because he is desperate not to lose her and this is the only thing he knows to do. (He is Malfoy to his bones.) He tells her these three words instead of certain other three words, and her pale mouth is poised as if to speak as she looks at him.

And then for a moment - for three, four, five breaths - Draco knows that all of Hermione is focused on him. She is mapping out his soul and unscrewing the top of his head and cataloguing his every thought and hope and dream. It is a strange, wonderful feeling -

But then - six. And she smiles like she doesn't know him, like she hasn't disarmed him in bloody duels, smoked cigarettes with him on the heights of Hogwarts or learned his smile or hoped.

She quietly walks away, leaving him alone.

. . ... .

I won't allow you to matter to me anymore.


End file.
